Chernobyl’s echo can still be heard

There is a serious danger to the health of the people, living in the territory, which suffered as a result of the Chernobyl tragedy. The UN and the international community urged everyone to pay attention to it in the recent report about the humanitarian consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

The scientists from different countries, which were included in the expert group, were working in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, trying to find out the scale of the deterioration 16 years after the tragedy, which happened on April 26. The report also summed up the results of the efforts, taken by three countries, which had suffered from the explosion, as well as by the international community for the liquidation of the consequences of the tremendous breakdown.

Scientists believe that the scale and the consequences of the Chernobyl tragedy have not yet received an adequate estimation in the world, although they have accelerated the development of the wide international cooperation in the field of science, humanitarian aid, and technologies.

For the time being, there are 100-200 thousand people living on the polluted territory, the exact number is not known, but all of them are in strong need of help and rehabilitation. Moreover, those people, who had to leave their homes 16 years ago, are currently coming back, the migrants from the former Soviet Union republics are settling in the polluted areas too.

The Parlamentskaya Gazeta wrote that the Russian specialists were “ousted” from Chernobyl. There is no money assigned for the research, the St.Petersburg experts were dismissed from the project of the new construction. The regulation to shut down the Chernobyl nuclear station has not been coordinated with the project organizations that control the station. The Ukrainian chiefs were hoping for millions of dollars, which would be transferred from the West for closing the nuclear station and building the new capacities. But the words never took the shape of money, in spite of the fact they were pronounced by the leaders of the Group of Eight. There is a strong lack of medical personnel in the area of the pollution. On the whole, the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian governments are not working coordinately, and the UN experts concluded that the current situation could result in new disasters.

Kenzo Oshima, the UN coordinator for the international cooperation on Chernobyl issue, started his three-day visit to Belarus yeasterday. The key subject for the discussion with the Belarussian government will be the latest report from the expert group.

RIA Novosti informed, one of the results of the visit could be the change of the UN’s policy regarding the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. It goes about the change of the financial mechanism, which is used for funding the works, connected with the Chernobyl nuclear station. The money used to be assigned for the humanitarian aid for the citizens of the regions that suffered most, but now the cash flows can be re-directed for creating and restoring the industrial infrastructure in those regions.

The UN programs will be aimed at assistance for stable socio-economic development of the suffered regions, and investments in the economy of the regions. The governments of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were reconsidering their politics for the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. The first priority is the economic rehabilitation of the suffered territories, providing jobs to people, liquidating the poverty.

Sergey Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov